Words like ettei “että ei“, vaikken “vaikka en” and ehkei “ehkä ei” are contractions, where a word (usually a conjunction) is combined with ei, the negative verb. In English, you have contractions as well, such as “nor” (and + not), “won’t” (will + not) and “I’m” (I + am). The Finnish grammar terms you could google for if needed are “syntagmaattinen sulauma” and “sulaumakonjunktio“.

1. Grammar Terms

1.1. What are conjunctions?

Conjunctions are words that connect two sentences to each other. For example, if we want to combine the clauses “Pysyn kotona.” and “Olen sairas.“, we can use the conjunction koska to create the sentence: “Pysyn kotona, koska olen sairas” (I stay at home because I am ill).

1.2. What is the “negative verb”?

In Finnish, we consider “ei” a verb, because it gets conjugated just like other verbs do.

1.3. What are contractions?

Contractions are a phenomenon in languages where two words are combined into one. Think, for example, of “won’t”, “you’re” and “it’s”). This article mostly deals with conjunction contractions, ie. words where a conjunction is combined with the negative verb “ei“.  You have a conjunction contraction in English as well: “and” and “not” are combined into “nor” (e.g. He’s not a child nor a teen).

The most common contraction in Finnish is by far ettei. We can also see a very clear tendency for the third person singular to be the most common for each contraction. For example, etten (että + first person singular en) and ettet (että + second person singular et) are less common than ettei.

2. Finnish Contraction Conjunctions

We contract conjunctions with the negative verb “ei” to condense sentences. It is used very regularly in both spoken and written Finnish. The third person singular is overwhelmingly the most common form of these contractions.

2.1. The conjunction ja combined with ei

When you combine two negative sentences, such as “Minä en syö” and “Minä en juo“, we can use the negative verb in combination with the suffix -kä. In English, you could translate this as “nor” in many situations. Note that the subject of both sentences must be the same person.

In a conversation, you can use eikä to express surprise or disbelief: “Voitin miljoonan lotossa.” — “Eikä! Onneksi olkoon!”

2.2. The negative imperative verb älä combined with ja

Similar to the previous, we can use the imperative forms of ei to create äläkä and älkääkä in negative orders: don’t do this and don’t do that!

2.3. The conjunction mutta combined with ei

When you combine mutta and the negative verb ei, you get a conjunction that expresses that one thing is true but the other isn’t.

2.4. The conjunction että combined with ei

This is clearly the most used contraction on this page. The singular third person form is the most common of all the forms.

2.5. The conjunction vaikka combined with ei

For this contraction as well, the third person singular vaikkei is used the most.

Note that, for the third person plural, you can run into both vaikkeivät and vaikkeivat. The form vaikkeivät is more common, even though it is against the vowel harmony rules. This is likely a sign that people don’t see vaikkeivät as a word on its own, but rather as two words squished together.

2.6. The conjunction jotta combined with ei

The contraction jotta translates to “so that” or “for the purpose that”. It expresses the reason for the main sentence it is attached to. When you combine jotta with the third person plural eivät, you can find both jotteivät (more common, defies vowel harmony) and jotteivat (less common).

It’s important to also point out that in some North-West dialects, jottei is understood as the combination of jos and ei (see section #4.7), while in other dialects this interpretation isn’t used.

2.7. The conjunction jos combined with ei

The singular forms are the most common, with the third person singular being by far the most used. When you combine jos with the third person plural eivät, you can find both jolleivät (more common, defies vowel harmony) and jolleivat (less common). In certain dialects, you will also hear jossei.

2.8. Colloquial language contractions

All the contractions up to this point are used in written Finnish. In addition, there are some contractions that are only used in colloquial Finnish. For these, it depends on the person and their dialect if they’re used, and if so, how often.

In general, the third person singular is by far the most common to be used. Note in addition that, in spoken Finnish, you won’t hear the third person plural form of these (e.g. josseivät). Instead, the third person singular (e.g. jossei) will be used even when referring to multiple people (e.g. Jossei ne tuu, niin emmäkään haluu” – If they don’t come, I don’t want to either).

3. Other contractions

3.1. The adverb ehkä combined with ei

The singular forms are much more common than the plural forms, and the third person singular is by far the most common of all.

Research has shown that ehkei is very often the first word in a sentence

3.2. The interrogative pronoun miksi combines with ei

A very common contraction in dialogues is miksei. See how a statement can be turned in a question:

• En saa karkkeja. (I don’t get candy) → Miksen saa karkkeja? (Why don’t I get candy?)
• Et tullut kouluun. (You didn’t come to school) → Mikset tullut kouluun? (Why didn’t you come to school?)
• Saara ei soita minulle. (Saara doesn’t call me) → Miksei Saara soita minulle? (Why doesn’t Saara call me?)

In contrast with the rest of the contractions on this page, for miksi, the most common form is actually mikset rather than the third person miksei.

In relation to miksei, I also want to mention siksei. The Master’s thesis has compared translated subtitles with other literary works, and notes that siksei is especially common in subtitles. It’s very often in the combination of “Miksei? – Siksei.”, where the English dialogue has “Why? – That’s why.” The other conjugated forms (e.g. miksen, miksette) are much less common.

You can also use miksei in conversations to agree to a proposition. For example, if someone asks you to go have a beer with them: “Mentäisko kaljalle?“, you could reply with “Miksei! Mennään vaan!“, “Juu, miksei” or “Miksipä ei“. These all mean something along the lines of “sure, why not”.

Read more elsewhere

Related posts:

The Difference Between Tai and Vai Mutta and Vaan – The Difference Between Conjunctions Sivulause – Finnish Sentence Types: Subordinate Clauses Siinä tapauksessa – Siitä huolimatta – Connectives